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Blog Archive for editor during March 2008

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Why not talk up your project at the Community Corner?
The sign-ups are already attracting proposed talks, so I want to take some time today to explain what these "mini-talks" we're always talking about are.
At JavaOne, we'll have a big booth, one end of which is reserved for 20-minute eyes-forward presentations. It's got a sound system and a screen for your slides, and seating for a...

Even more languages on the JVM
One event that went by last week -- not necessarily front-page-worthy, but definitely bloggable -- was Sun's announcement that it has hired Python developers Ted Leung and Frank Wierzbicki. Given Frank's association with the Jython project, it's a good bet this augurs well for the future of Python on the JVM, as did last year's hiring of JRuby developers...

Are new interfaces innovative or just gimmicks?
Last week, I blogged about one of the sessions at the Java Posse Roundup about user interfaces that eventually got off the topic of GUI toolkits -- of which Java has too many, not enough, or both -- and veered into the idea of alternate input methods as contributing to the effectiveness of the user's interaction with the computer. Some of us...

NetBeans wins again
Great news from last week's SD West Conference and the 18th Annual Jolt Awards ceremony, as NetBeans has won the development environment award for a second year in a row. The IDE was also a "Productivity Award" winner in two categories: Web Development and Mobility Development (with Sun Java Wireless Toolkit 2.5.2), also repeating last year's wins.
The NetBeans IDE...

Can applets make a comeback?
After the early enthusiasm for applets faded, some argued that the idea of putting a rich runtime in a box inside a web page was just a silly idea to begin with. Yet the subsequent success of Flash doing more or less the same thing suggests the idea is fine, it's just that the applet implementation, specifically the browser plug-in, was poor.
So, if done right...

Java coming to the iPhone?
Many developers were keeping close track of last Thursday's release of a public SDK for the iPhone (and iPod Touch, and presumably similar devices from Apple in the future). To the Java developer, this seems like competition for the many ME devices out there, but maybe it's actually an opportunity? It's certainly a game-changer.
The latest Java Mobility...

The Java Posse Roundup overwhelms a town's pizza capacity
Today is the last day of the Java Posse Roundup open-spaces conference. Last night, the group got together at the house the Posse is renting for some Scala demos, lightning talks (including a very impressive JavaFX demo in which Parleys.com duplicated their Flex-based conference viewer in JavaFX), and pizza. Problem is, with 38...

How superpackages will make sense of your Java 7 code
After an understandable delay -- author Elliotte Rusty Harold took a new job and moved across the country -- our Open Road series on the open-source development of Java 7 continues with a new feature article today. After a brief update on the current status of the OpenJDK project, Elliot dives right in with an introduction to a new...

Things not to do at startups
The Java Posse Roundup is underway in snow-covered Crested Butte... and I'm serious about the snow part. Check out Robert Cooper's photo of fellow Roundup attendee Charlie Collins standing in front of a snowbank that blocks the entire first floor of the house behind him.
The theme of this open-spaces conference is "don't repeat yourself", a pretty flexible...

Does Rails' "whipitupitude" really mean EE is "dead"?
When someone posts a blog title like Is J2EE Dead?, as BrianÂ O'Neill recently did, you really can't help but look. It's just too strong of a statement to let slide, because either he's right, which means a lot of us should be updating our resumes to emphasize our strengths in non-"dead" technologies, or he's wrong, in which case there's...